JANET STREET-PORTER: If women want better pay, we need to stand up for ourselves

Have you ever asked for a pay rise? I'm a brave woman who speaks her mind, but when it comes to remuneration, I'm a coward.

Increasingly, we feel grateful to be in work, and as you get older you don't want to rock the boat by asking for more money in case you suddenly find yourself surplus to requirements. Women remain stuck in low-paid jobs, and are usually the first to be laid off.

And yet, unless we overcome our natural reluctance to broach the subject of pay, we will never rise up to the top and achieve equality.

Better pay: If women want it, they musn't be so reluctant to ask for it

According to a new YouGov survey, four out of five women have never asked for promotion and three-quarters of us have never asked for a pay rise.

What's amazing about these statistics is the fact that women will haggle over the price of everything from curtains to cookers in a shop, run the family budget and make all the major spending decisions at home. But when it comes to speaking up for ourselves, we're silent.

Men, on the other hand, don't have the same reluctance - more than half say they would ask for more cash or promotion if they felt they deserved it.

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Why do women find this so embarrassing? It all comes down to confidence.

Recently, I was asked to do some work and offered a sum of money that was less than I was paid eight years ago. When I complained (by email, I'd never have the guts to do it in person) I was told I wasn't worth more.

It was like a slap in the face. I felt I'd been slung on the media scrap heap.

Transparency: Few of us are prepared to discuss our wages in public unfortunately

Eventually, after sticking to my guns and growing a thicker skin, I managed to get a sum nearer to what I had asked for.

In my business, you get dumped if you overstep what people are prepared to pay - but that's the world of the freelance.

In an office or factory, women and men in the same job regularly get paid differently and men get bigger bonuses.

The only way to end this discrimination is by transparency, but few of us are prepared to discuss our wages in public.

It's a subject about which the very mention makes women go all pink and anxious, like discussing the infrequency of love-making and facial hair.

The workplace is full of false friends, who pretend they are your mates but who would stab you in the back if they thought you might be promoted over them. Going for a better job means losing pals and gaining responsibility - and too few women are willing to do that.

We'd rather the cosy coterie of fellow toilers than risking the loneliness that comes with getting a toehold in management.

On a more basic level, how many people aren't even paid the legal minimum wage of just £6.31 an hour?

Today, a new higher living wage will be announced, but that is only a recommendation to employers, a social campaign supported by Ed Miliband and the Prime Minister.

The minimum wage ought be to more rigorously enforced - there has been only one prosecution in the past year. Under new rules from October 1, the Government says employers are to be named and shamed in the local press and on Twitter - a fat lot of difference that will make.

Campaign: Romola Garai, at the 2010 BAFTAs, could be our most pretentious actress

A whopping 700 employers did not pay their staff of around 300,000 the minimum wage in the past year. Care homes are run by profit-making conglomerates who pay 13 per cent of their staff - mostly women - less than the national minimum.

Two things need to happen. The Government should aggressively prosecute employers who don't pay the legal minimum.

And women must start speaking up for themselves.

A pretentious crusade and the whiff of hypocrisy

Is Romola Garai our most pretentious actress? Someone not just pleased to be working, but who feels compelled to inform us about her crusade to improve the world.

Recently, she has promoted a campaign to get lads magazines such as Zoo and Nuts banned by Tesco, claiming that they demean women - despite the fact she posed in black knickers and stockings while flat on her back for Esquire a few years ago.

Romola claims no one buys Esquire for sexual pleasure, so that's OK then.

Promoting her new spy drama Legacy on BBC2, she dismisses scripts 'where a female character is described physically before anything else'.

Romola says 'the media in the UK is inherently sexist', but what about those tight dresses she wore playing Bel, a journalist in The Hour?

Bel was too pouty and nowhere near as tough as female journalists I met when I started out, like this paper's Ann Leslie.

The Hour, like many telly dramas, uses women as set dressing. Only the divine Peggy in Mad Men is allowed to be frumpy.

Legacy is set in Seventies London - I wonder if Romola has managed to 'edit' her wardrobe.

In a bid to woo voters, Labour plans to announce it will scrap marriage notice fees if elected. Currently, when you go to the local register office and give notice of your wedding (required by law), it costs £35 per person.

Like the Conservative plan to introduce tax breaks of £200 for married couples, this proposal is window dressing that won't impress anyone. Seventy pounds is hardly a commitment to marriage: it would barely pay for a wedding meal for four.

Halloween: The time when celebrities make prats of themselves as they opt for 'fun' fancy dress

When did wrinkles become a scream?

Social commentators were aghast last week - top model Heidi Klum turned up at her own Halloween party dressed as AN OLD PERSON. She is said to have a 'sense of humour' and chose the costume because there was 'a lot of talk about being older' when she turned 40 in June.

Hasn't she heard that 60 is the new 40 - well, it is for me! In the mad world of celebrity, women don't age like the rest of us, they just have their bits re-arranged upwards. Maybe we should congratulate Heidi for daring to display what a 90-year-old woman who can't afford cosmetic surgery might look like. Halloween is when celebrities make prats of themselves as they opt for 'fun' fancy dress.

This year, my favourite was life-style guru Martha Stewart's hideous Glinda costume. In The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, Good Witch Glinda has long red hair and wears a white dress. Martha looked like a huge pink toilet-roll cover.

Sven's scoring puts his footballers to shame

Saturday was enlivened by Sven-Goran Eriksson's memoirs (more yesterday and today - hoorah!). I don't think I have laughed so much in ages. Forget boring football tactics, Sven is a modern caveman, who takes attractive women's phone numbers everywhere he goes (generally when their husbands are out of the room) and then finds himself having sex with them in the middle of the day . . . and managing to work with some of the world's top football teams at the same time.

He is such a refreshing contrast to goody two shoes David Beckham, who was interviewed to promote his own autobiography (written like a fairy story in which everything is wonderful, dreams come true, everyone works really hard and is really nice) on Radio 4's Front Row the other night, as if he were a real author.

Sven's prose is hilarious and far more down to earth: he claims Nancy's husband 'was a good man . . . he always carried her bags'.

Eventually, life with Nancy is too draining and Sven tells her: 'Go out and find another man, preferably one with a lot of money.' At a party, she goes to the bathroom and Sven says: 'I decided to say hello to Ulrika.' No prizes for guessing what happened next. This soapy saga would make a great telly drama.